Silas
Beloved of All
Your prayer reflects a sincere desire to abide in Christ and to have His words abide in you, to abide in His love, and to walk by His Word as a lamp to your feet and a light to your path. That desire is right and good, and it is right to test everything by the law and the testimony, for Scripture remains the sure measure of what is from God.
Prayer is essential for guidance and for life itself. If the Son of God saw the necessity of prayer and rose early to seek the Father, how much more do we need to pray. Your commitment to bring your wife, your children, your family and extended family, and those who minister alongside you before the Lord is vital to the spiritual life. Continue steadfast in that.
Only a divine work of God can cleanse and restore what is broken. As only God could cure the leper, and the law itself made provision for His grace to operate when He chose to heal and bring that person back into the community, so only God can work the healing that is needed in a marriage and in a heart that has wandered. Jesus showed His willingness and His divine authority when He said to the leper, be clean, and when He said to the paralytic, your sins are forgiven. That claim was a claim to be God, for only God can forgive sins, and He proved His power to forgive by His power to heal and restore. Bring your wife and your own heart to Him on that basis, trusting not in human persuasion but in His gracious power to forgive, to cleanse, and to bring back into fellowship.
A true work of God is marked by repentance, by a change and a restoration. When David sinned in taking his neighbor's wife and in the death that followed, he confessed that his sin was against God. Forgiveness was real, and where conversion is real there is a turning from wrong. Pray therefore not only for warnings and impressions, but for genuine repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, through whom alone we come to God and who ever lives to intercede for us. He is able to save completely those who come to God through Him.
God has spoken in various ways in Scripture, at times through a dream in the night to warn and to turn a person from pride and from the pit, as with Abimelech in the days of Abraham, or to direct Joseph and the magi, and He poured out His Spirit as promised by Joel. Yet it is folly and presumption for anyone to claim new divine revelation as if it carries the same authority as Scripture or to pretend to know what God has not revealed. The Scriptures must be fulfilled, and what God has said will be will be. Rather than seeking to dictate how God must speak, whether by an audible voice, a vision while awake, a dream while sleeping, or a prophetic word, seek Him through His Word and by His Spirit according to His Word. The Holy Spirit leads the children of God, and the Shepherd's voice is known by those who are His, but that leading will never contradict what He has already said in the Bible.
For this reason be cautious about the common teaching today that we should look within, practice meditation to discover the person inside, and seek guidance from within ourselves. That is not the biblical pattern. We are to look to Christ and to His Word, not to an inner voice detached from Scripture. Let the Word dwell in you richly, and ask for the Spirit of wisdom and counsel promised in Isaiah to give understanding as you walk in obedience.
God has demonstrated His divine power over the powers of darkness in a way that cannot be denied, and His purposes cannot be thwarted. Nothing is impossible with God, though many things are impossible with man. He is able to do all things, and light is stronger than darkness. At the same time, He calls us to walk in the way He has revealed, to pray to be kept from temptation, from evil, from deception and from the evil one, and to let our requests be made known to Him with thanksgiving, trusting His incomprehensible peace to guard our hearts in Christ.
So continue to pray for your wife, for your children, and for your household, that God would do His divine work of conviction, forgiveness, and restoration. Pray for yourself, that your instruction would lead to love from a pure heart, sincere faith, and a clear conscience. Pray for your family and for those who shepherd you, that you would all be kept from sin and error and kept faithful. Abide in Christ, abide in His love by keeping His commandments, and let His Word remain in you. As you do, trust His intercession and His faithfulness to fulfill every promise He has made in Jesus, in whom all the promises are Yes and Amen.
Prayer is essential for guidance and for life itself. If the Son of God saw the necessity of prayer and rose early to seek the Father, how much more do we need to pray. Your commitment to bring your wife, your children, your family and extended family, and those who minister alongside you before the Lord is vital to the spiritual life. Continue steadfast in that.
Only a divine work of God can cleanse and restore what is broken. As only God could cure the leper, and the law itself made provision for His grace to operate when He chose to heal and bring that person back into the community, so only God can work the healing that is needed in a marriage and in a heart that has wandered. Jesus showed His willingness and His divine authority when He said to the leper, be clean, and when He said to the paralytic, your sins are forgiven. That claim was a claim to be God, for only God can forgive sins, and He proved His power to forgive by His power to heal and restore. Bring your wife and your own heart to Him on that basis, trusting not in human persuasion but in His gracious power to forgive, to cleanse, and to bring back into fellowship.
A true work of God is marked by repentance, by a change and a restoration. When David sinned in taking his neighbor's wife and in the death that followed, he confessed that his sin was against God. Forgiveness was real, and where conversion is real there is a turning from wrong. Pray therefore not only for warnings and impressions, but for genuine repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, through whom alone we come to God and who ever lives to intercede for us. He is able to save completely those who come to God through Him.
God has spoken in various ways in Scripture, at times through a dream in the night to warn and to turn a person from pride and from the pit, as with Abimelech in the days of Abraham, or to direct Joseph and the magi, and He poured out His Spirit as promised by Joel. Yet it is folly and presumption for anyone to claim new divine revelation as if it carries the same authority as Scripture or to pretend to know what God has not revealed. The Scriptures must be fulfilled, and what God has said will be will be. Rather than seeking to dictate how God must speak, whether by an audible voice, a vision while awake, a dream while sleeping, or a prophetic word, seek Him through His Word and by His Spirit according to His Word. The Holy Spirit leads the children of God, and the Shepherd's voice is known by those who are His, but that leading will never contradict what He has already said in the Bible.
For this reason be cautious about the common teaching today that we should look within, practice meditation to discover the person inside, and seek guidance from within ourselves. That is not the biblical pattern. We are to look to Christ and to His Word, not to an inner voice detached from Scripture. Let the Word dwell in you richly, and ask for the Spirit of wisdom and counsel promised in Isaiah to give understanding as you walk in obedience.
God has demonstrated His divine power over the powers of darkness in a way that cannot be denied, and His purposes cannot be thwarted. Nothing is impossible with God, though many things are impossible with man. He is able to do all things, and light is stronger than darkness. At the same time, He calls us to walk in the way He has revealed, to pray to be kept from temptation, from evil, from deception and from the evil one, and to let our requests be made known to Him with thanksgiving, trusting His incomprehensible peace to guard our hearts in Christ.
So continue to pray for your wife, for your children, and for your household, that God would do His divine work of conviction, forgiveness, and restoration. Pray for yourself, that your instruction would lead to love from a pure heart, sincere faith, and a clear conscience. Pray for your family and for those who shepherd you, that you would all be kept from sin and error and kept faithful. Abide in Christ, abide in His love by keeping His commandments, and let His Word remain in you. As you do, trust His intercession and His faithfulness to fulfill every promise He has made in Jesus, in whom all the promises are Yes and Amen.
